Tag Archives: Communism

Here’s another bit of audio-only content. I did another guest spot on Wizardly Wisdom Podcast. The first one was a blast, but this one is about 20% more awesome. We spoke about the philosophical underpinnings of the libertarian movement, some historical context for different positions people hold to be “the libertarian position”, and why discourse about this discourse is important.

You’ll have to forgive my rough audio, we had some technical difficulties, but I think the content more than makes up for a little echo and click.

This week, I had the pleasure of being invited on the Wizardly Wisdom podcast.

We discussed a decently broad array of subjects, mostly centered around philosophy and libertarianism. I’m about 70% happy with my performance this time around, so I guess I should apologize for not bringing my “A” game. Still, I think this is an episode worth listening to, and the show over at Kenny the Wizard’s feed is worth listening to, as well.

If you liked this discussion, you’d love the 2016 anthology book, especially the book-exclusive chapter on “late stage anarchism”.

If you are reading this near the end of November in 2016, you can get some major discounts and provide a great deal of support to the Mad Philosopher project by going to Tom Woods Liberty Classroom and subscribing. If you are reading this at any other time, you can still provide a great amount of value to the project by doing so.

Tom Woods Liberty Classroom is easily one of the most undervalued resources available on the internet, as it provides a legitimate PhD-level resource on a number of crucial subjects such as history and economics. The term “legitimate” is important, here, as what most universities provide is only half-true and full of leftist propaganda. This resource is the closest to comprehensive and the closest to unbiased as can be found.

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Today, I have another guest spot I’d like to present. I feel much better about my performance on this episode than the previous guest spot I had, and I’d like my readers/listeners to check out the work that they do over at Logical Anarchy.

Before you read this post, I recommend that you read my recent post on why I’m doing this. Also, you should probably read No Treason by Lysander Spooner before commenting on this particular post. Most especially, I want you to pay attention to his case for “voting in self defense” (to which I do not ascribe) and his case that a secret ballot proves that a) the government is nothing but a band of criminals and b) that those voting in self defense ought to share their ballot selections in order to promote responsibility for one’s actions (no matter how minor).

PresidentDonald Trump
I wish all the propaganda that the media is putting forth were true. I wish that Trump were a belligerent troll who wanted to go back to “the good old days” when only land-owning men could vote. I wish he were willing to imprison and execute the liberal puppets in the media. I wish he would nominate supreme court judges who were radically pro-gun, pro-life, and anti-left. I wish Trump were a radical social conservative who wanted to deregulate the markets and slash taxes. In other words, I wish Trump were literally Hitler.
Looking at the man and his words, though, the best we can hope for is a man who makes liberals cry, move away, and kill themselves because “he said something mean about that one lady that everyone hates”. There’s no telling what he will do in office, but his rhetoric so far has been the best thing I’ve heard any politician other than Putin say in my lifetime.
Hilary Clinton is evil incarnate, Gary Johnson is a drug-addles cuck who doesn’t even know what libertarianism is and he gives freedom-minded people everywhere a bad name, and all the other third-party candidates are religious fanatics and socialists who have only the most tenuous grasp of reality. This makes Trump preferable… even if the comparison is similar that of being slowly dismembered with a spork versus being shot in the back of the head.

US SenatorLily Tang Williams
This one was a close call between Glenn and Williams. At the end of the day, Bennet will win because of the gerrymandered and skewed electoral pool within the state, so I might as well choose the candidate that has the most sound policies in general. Some may get upset that I’m voting for a candidate that is wishy-washy on abortion, but she’s no less wishy-washy than Glenn if you look at his history. I’m not a fan of her rhetoric on equality and promoting drug use, but her economic policies more than make up for her lack of social conservatism as compared to Glenn

District 6 Rep.Norm Olsen
This was another tough one between the republican and libertarian. The thing that made it difficult was the abortion issue again. On all other counts, Olsen trounces Coffman. The determining factor for me is that neither Coffman or Olsen are actually pro-life; one wants to try to limit, in some regards, some aspects of the abortion industry while the other basically wants to get the government out of the issue altogether (a largely libertarian position). If Coffman were actually anti-abortion, I would be forced to chose him over Olsen, given that he’s not, I am voting Olsen.

Amendment TAgainst
There is a twofold reasoning behind this one. Firstly, because in a free society private enterprises that would serve a similar function to prisons would likely require something that would approach or meet the description of servitude or slavery that the state uses. To disallow, wholesale, that option is to take a step away from a free society. Secondly, because the measure is being put forth by egalitarian cultural marxists in order to push a specific cultural narrative. Barring throwing these people from helicopters, stopping their ballot measures is an acceptable one-tenth measure.

Amendment UFor
Simple: it’s a reduction of taxes. There’s all sorts of minor other arguments taking place; for example, the fact that the state spends more money collecting said tax than they gain means that they are currently literally just stealing our money in order to waste it on things like stamps and envelopes. By reducing the tax burden on small-time property owners, one is also reducing the tax expenditure burden.

Amendment 69Against
A handful of liberal shithead doctors in Boulder want a violent monopoly on all things related to health services in Colorado. It’s nationalized medicine on a state-level, and it will be worse than even Obamacre. Also, my premiums have already doubled, I don’t need them to triple or quadruple. Also, no legitimate law should take up 11 pages of that stupid blue book they send you in the mail.

Amendment 70Against
Any legitimate economist will tell you that minimum wage is a bad idea, unless you are simply trying to kill of ethnicities that are less-able to provide value to others by pricing them out of the labor pool and leaving them to starve. (Or, if you’re a democrat, purchasing them via welfare to become professional voters).
I, personally, would go from having a hard time managing my staff as a facilities manager to being unable to do so at all. My place of work would go out of business (and that, given that it’s a church in a wealthy neighborhood, is an indicator that it would destroy what’s left of the Church in Colorado.)

Amendment 71For
This one took a lot of research and moral/ethical reasoning to decide. Ultimately, the lynchpin argument is thus: If one is forced to be subject to hyper-inclusive mass-democracy, it would be prudent to try and prevent situations like Amendment 69 from arising. If a handful of doctors in Boulder can get enough signatures from CU students to ruin everyone’s lives, that’s a problem.
Yes, it may slow down measures put forth to, say, secede from the Union or to limit the political power of Denver over the rest of the state, but those measures aren’t going to pass anyway.

Amendment 72Against
Again, it’s a simple matter of limiting the crime of taxation. Also, it’s disingenuous to advertise it as a “cigarette tax”, because the language slips in several, much more broad taxation schemes. Besides, sin taxes are stupid.

Proposition 106Against
I’m against it, but not for the reasons that most people would assume. I think the Thomists (mainstream Catholics) have gotten themselves all confused and backwards on issues concerning suicide, but that’s a different blog post. In a free society, I could probably go to Walgreens and buy morphine; they may have a system in place to prevent customers from buying lethal doses, but I could have a friend go get a second not-quite-lethal dose for me, or whatever. That would make something akin to 106 look like a “pro-liberty proposition” (yes, I know that’s an oxymoron).
However, with the way the law itself is written (all nine pages of it), it puts way too much power in the hands of doctors and actually removes certain safeguards against malpractice provided to patients. At the end of the day, I cannot help but get conspiratorial about 106 and think it’s an intentional inroad to the Obamacare “death panels” and political assassinations.

Proposition 107Against
You would think an anarchist wouldn’t have a principled stance on how primaries ought to be conducted. At the end of the day, though, the political parties that exist are voluntary associations of people. By using the violence of the state to allow non-party individuals to impact the goings-on within a party, one effectively destroys the party in any actionable sense. If a handful of my friends decided to build a clubhouse and put up a “no girls allowed” sign, it would be criminal for the state to demand that the activities within the clubhouse correspond to the wishes of women who are, obviously, not in the club. Same idea.
I believe this ballot measure was put forward by the same marxists pushing amendment T. Rather than joining the Republican or Libertarian parties, they would rather just use the aforementioned professional voters to make those parties even more cuck-y and lefty than they already are.

Proposition 108Against
See proposition 107. This is merely pushing the intrusion even further.

Issue 4BAgainst
I am opposed to a good portion of what the SCFD does, and I am certainly opposed to continuing and increasing taxes.

State Board of EducationDebora Scheffel
There’s no actionable difference between the two, so this is merely my anti-democrat bias in action.

Regent of CUHeidi Ganahl
See Board of Education

State Representative District 43Kevin Van Winkle
I’m not exactly impressed with Van Winkle, but Wagner is a died-in-the-wool socialist and should be thrown from a helicopter.

18th Judicial District and RTDNobody
Since the position is uncontested, there is no opportunity to voice a preference. As such, I can’t justify voting on these positions.

County Comissioner District 2 and 3Partridge and Thomas
Just the same as the education positions: there’s no actionable difference other than party affiliation.

JudgesThis one is a tricky one for me. My default setting is to simply vote against retention of all the judges because they are all terrible. At the same time, some are on the better end of the bell curve as far as terrible judges are concerned. In such a case, it may be preferable to retain said judges because their replacements are (statistically) likely to be worse. That looks too much like an endorsement to me, though; I am either going to vote against retaining or not vote with regards to the judges, either on an individual basis or altogether. I haven’t decided yet.

This week, I’ve got a treat for you guys. I was a guest on The Downfall with Jared and Dave! I wrote briefly about them before, and it was an honor being welcomed onto their show. I gave them about a week to get all their regular views before posting it here, just so that they could get credit for their quality production, first.

Also, if you’ve somehow missed the repeated announcements, we’re on Patreon! Please consider incentivizing the production of more Mad Philosopher content; big donors get neat prizes and the ability to influence the direction of the show and if we hit certain goals, the project can expand.

In 1969, two significant libertarians wrote articles for the Libertarian Forum Volume 1. One Karl Hess published a list of questions he felt needed concrete answers from the libertarian community and Murray Rothbard dutifully stepped up to the plate and answered those questions from a principled, pragmatic, and economically-minded stance. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, though, this work of Rothbard’s has been excised from the libertarian consciousness and left to the AnComs to champion.

Rothbard is widely recognized as the arch-AnCap and rightly so. Without too much geeking out, I want it to be known that Rothbard, with nothing but a pen, brain, and lectures, has done more for humanity’s sake than nearly any other individual. Of course, he used that brain, pen, and lecturing gig towards such an end for fifty-or-so years and, understandably, made some mistakes along the way. The most significant of those mistakes, which he admitted to being an unmitigated disaster , was the time he spent on the political left.

Between the left-friendly rhetoric and the apparent inability for most to contextualize and dispassionately read material, “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle” has gone overlooked despite its presentation of what amounts to, simultaneously, the most principled and most actionable solution concerning the problem of de-socializing state property. Admittedly, this is not entirely Rothbard’s fault, as he was answering the questions of Mr. Hess, a bleeding-heart liberal lacking any solid grasp of libertarianism’s philosophical commitments. Instead of shredding Hess’ article for it’s numerous errors, though, Rothbard attempted to address it on its own terms.

Hess was clearly unaware of the inherent “right-wing” nature of libertarianism/anarchism, openly denigrating “the right” in favor for “left-libertarian” (AKA Marxist) presumptions. The most philosophically criminal of which being his overturning of the ontological hierarchy of human activities, claiming that conceptions of rights and property are derived from some goal of human activity as opposed to the other way around. Such an argument is nothing short of a performative contradiction. Additionally, he lifts openly Marxist revolutionary rhetoric and terminology while also demanding that specifics be given concerning environmental agendas, the revolutionary takeover of General Motors, and egalitarian nonsense such as racially-motivated “reparations” programs in the context of libertarianism.

Given the stage of development Rothbard was at and the stage set by Hess, it isn’t surprising how Marxist Rothbard’s response sounds. Despite all the garbage concerning answers to Hess’ stupid questions, Rothbard still produced a gem which demands legitimate attention. Instead of doing what Rothbard ought to have done and devoting my energy to destroying Hess, what I want to do here is mine out the gem Rothbard created using his later, more AnCap material to inform this activity.

Slave Rebellions and the Homestead Principle

It can be taken for granted in anarchist circles that the dichotomy most central to libertarian discourse is that between the state (socialists) and the individual (anarchists). Another, less equivocal, way to name that dichotomy would be that between the criminal (outlaw) and the non-criminal. In order to appropriately understand this dichotomy, one must first come to an appropriate, if basic, understanding of property.

In the tradition of John Locke, property comes into being by way of homesteading. The simplest conception of homesteading is that unowned property enters into private ownership by virtue of an individual investing one’s own property into it, whether it be labor or materials or by way of occupying or otherwise adding value to it. After a certain property is homesteaded, it can easily pass from one owner to another by way of voluntary trade or donation. This is the basis of all forms of human interaction and that which is commonly referred to as “rights”.

For the sake of clarity, a definition of “property” ought to be proffered here. I use the term to mean “any discrete object to which one has access, control over, and a legitimate claim by virtue of homestead or acquisition from the previous owner with the owner’s assent”. Incidentally, I’ve also addressed the concept of “theft” as applies to property before, and recommend that others read the post centered on the issue. In lieu of reading the whole post, one should at least be aware that theft, in this conception, is the unauthorized use, consumption, or acquisition of another’s property.

In such a case that one steals another’s property, one is engaged in crime and is, therefore, deserving of the title and status of “outlaw”. The unfortunate etymology of the term notwithstanding, all it means is that one such individual is not likely to be welcome in polite, cooperative society, so much so that they are likely to, themselves, have property taken from them and be the recipient of violence. Ideally, this circumstance would lead to the outlaw seeking reconciliation with his victims, making the victim whole. Even if reconciliation is impossible, it would still be morally and economically preferable for the outlaw’s stolen property to be confiscated by literally any private individual who can invest it back into cooperative society. Not only should the stolen property be re-appropriated by the market, but also any (formerly) legitimate property belonging to the outlaw which was utilized for that theft.

The clear example of this principle would be a back-alley mugging. Say I take a shortcut down the wrong alley in Denver and find myself held at gunpoint. My assailant demands my wallet. For the sake of discussion, I either hand over my wallet or have it forced from me. It would clearly be justified if I were to promptly re-appropriate my wallet from him. Not only would it be tactically sound, but it would also be morally justified for me to confiscate his firearm and maybe even his getaway vehicle as well. If I am overpowered and some honorable bystander witnesses this event, he would be equally justified in intervening and doing so on my behalf.

This action is preferable and just for three reasons. Firstly, it makes the victim of a crime closer to being made whole and increases the opportunity for justice to take place. Secondly, it decreases the opportunity of the outlaw to continue committing crimes. Thirdly, it sends a market signal that there are externalities and risks associated with committing crimes, thereby reducing the likelihood of others taking such a course of action.

A crime which has only recently been acknowledged as such, historically speaking, is that of slavery. Ultimately, slavery is little more than institutionalized coercion and theft. The (largely fictional) account of slavery in the American South is an easy example of this reality: individuals compelled by the use of force to perform tasks and refrain from others while also being robbed of the fruits of their labor. This description may sound reductionist, but no one could argue that it is not the heart of the matter. The only change that may be warranted would be the addition of some description of scale, but that is superfluous to this discussion.

Given the above description of homesteading, theft, and confiscation along with the popular sentiment concerning slavery, I imagine it would be largely non-controversial to claim that a slave rebellion in such a climate would be morally justified. At a minimum, one who believes the American Revolution was justified would have to acknowledge the legitimacy of a slave rebellion in the South.

Such a fictional rebellion could take several forms. One, unfortunately impractical, instance would be an entire plantation or county witnessing its slave populations simply standing tall and walking off the plantation. I imagine most can see why that would be impossible; given the surrounding environment, it would likely turn out much like emancipation really did. More likely to succeed and more in-line with the first part of this post would be the confiscation or re-homestead of the plantations. Rather than remaining complicit with their slavery (horizontal enforcement, complying with orders, etc.), the slaves could act in self-defense, thereby exiling or executing their masters and confiscating or re-homesteading the products of their forced labor and the instruments by which that theft occurred.

This is where Rothbard’s application of the homestead principle comes into play. How ought the slave re-appropriate the plantation? What options are available? By way of the nature of homesteading, each slave who remains on the plantation and continues to work would naturally come into ownership of his tools and the immediate fruits of his labor. While the theory is simple and broad, the application could be messy and case-specific.

One possibility would be an extreme individualist approach, whereby the individual plants on the plantation would be divided among the farmhands while the individual household appliances and rooms would be divided among the house servants and a micro-economy could emerge whereby the cooks could prepare meals in exchange for the fruits of the field and as rent for staying in the house… but this solution is likely to result in friction: petty squabbles over bits and pieces of the plantation and personal disputes.

An other option would be to collectivize ownership of the plantation whereby a communist micro-state could be formed. Each former slave would continue doing the very things they were before the rebellion, only replacing the masters’ directions with weekly meetings to determine how the plantation ought to be run. Presumably, these meetings would also serve to manage how wealth ought to be distributed amongst the former slaves who choose to stay. Of course, this solution looks far too similar to an Orwell novel and is likely to go as well as the Bolshevik revolution.

A more likely to succeed option would be a sort of middle-ground by which the confiscated plantation would be incorporated, for lack of a more accurate term. It would take a certain degree of commitment and foresight, but the former slaves could divide the plantation into a number of shares equal to the number of remaining former slaves, essentially granting virtual ownership of the plantation to those who re-homesteaded it. This creates an economic incentive to remain and invest labor and play nice with others in order to increase the value of the shares one owns in the plantation. Such activities would increase the dividends and resale value of the share as well as increasing the security of one’s livelihood. However, if one desired to leave, they could, using the dividends or resale of the share to serve as compensation for one’s participation in the labor and rebellion preceding his departure.

Admittedly, this is all hypothetical. To my knowledge, no such rebellion occurred in actual history, which leads me to believe that slavery, writ large, wasn’t as bad as I was told in elementary school. Even so, I only presented three out of a literal infinitude of resolutions of a slave rebellion. Given my more pessimistic views of human genetics, the most likely outcome would be something similar to that which exists in sub-Saharan Africa as opposed to Iceland. However, this hypothetical would be far more likely to end well in the following example.

Before moving further, it is important to draw attention to the basics of this hypothetical. The justification for and the means of achieving this slave rebellion is a combination of self-defense and confiscation in conjunction with the homestead principle, as indicated at the beginning of this post. Self-defense from criminal acts is eminently justifiable, this applies to theft and coercion and, therefore, to slavery. In the case of self-defense, confiscation of the implements of crime-in-progress as well as stolen property is justified as well. Stolen property is, in practice, unowned due to the outlaw effect and the lack of legitimate claim in conjunction with access to the property. Even if that weren’t the case, an executed or exiled criminal’s former property (legitimate or otherwise) is effectively unowned and, therefore, open to homestead.

With this argument in mind, we turn our attention to other instances of slavery. Most widespread, historically and today, is the case of slavery known as the state. By way of regulation, taxation, enforcement, and other euphemistically-named criminal activities, the state coerces specific behaviors, steals and destroys property, and engages in all manner of murderous, coercive, and thieving activities. It is impossible to define slavery in a manner consistent with its historical referents while excluding government in a manner consistent with its historical referents. In Rothbard’s words, “The state is a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called ‘taxation’ and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around.”

In the case of state-slavery “All taxpayers, all draftees, all victims of the State have been mulcted… Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty.” In the spirit of the earlier example, “How to go about returning all this property to the taxpayers? What proportions should be used in this terrific tangle of robbery and injustice that we have all suffered at the hands of the State? Often, the most practical method of de-statizing is simply to grant the moral right of ownership on the person or group who seizes the property from the State. Of this group, the most morally deserving are the ones who are already using the property but who have no moral complicity in the State’s act of aggression. These people then become the “homesteaders” of the stolen property and hence the rightful owners.”

The specific examples are largely straightforward: police can take their armor, guns, and vehicles home and take advantage of a sudden demand for private security personnel in the absence of the state. Lawyers and judges can establish arbitration firms. Educators can take control of the facilities and implements of education and continue to teach in a competitive market. Those currently providing non-marketable “services”, such as DMV employees, bureaucrats, union thugs, and military will likely have to find a way to re-brand their respective talents of race poverty. Of course, the slave-holders themselves, the politicians, executive officers, representatives, and lobbyists will face exile or execution. Unfortunately, not everything is that straightforward. What of corporatist entities? General Motors, Haliburton, Koch, MSNBC, the Post Office, and “private” colleges are wholly indistinguishable from the state, itself.

“As a result of zealous lobbying on behalf of the recipient… The same principle applies… they deserve a similar fate of virtuous homesteading and confiscation.” In the case of corporations and organizations that receive half or more of their funds though government institutions, they are effectively inseparable from the state and must suffer the same fate. The military industrial complex, especially, ought to be confiscated from the criminal band known as the state, not only for its complicity in theft but also its open endorsement of globalized murder. Important note: this is a wholly different issue that the legal abuse suffered by firearms and alcohol manufacturers and distributors when their products are abused.

Speaking of these absurdly regulated industries, many of a communist persuasion will argue that all industry is a beneficiary of government and ought to be re-homesteaded. I disagree. Whereas Haliburton is a direct recipient of welfare, most other corporations are merely indirect beneficiaries of the state’s criminal activities by way of limited competition, externalized expenses, and coercing purchase of goods and services. These corporations will be forced, in the absence of the state, to either adapt to the ensuing market correction or fold and sell their assets. Besides, it is morally suspect and quite inefficient to try and homestead every regulated industry. Those that manage to adapt to market correction were clearly sufficiently virtuous enough to deserve protection from re-homestead, whereas those that fold and sell out were vicious enough to deserve such a fate and homesteading becomes superfluous, as those entities are peaceably re-introduced into the free market.

TL;DR: What is required to de-socialize the state and appropriately pursue the abolition of slavery is nothing short of a slave rebellion. Such a slave rebellion must be conducted in accordance with the moral principles of self-defense, confiscation, and homestead. Otherwise, such activities are likely to end in the establishment of an even-less preferable state of affairs, such as that of communism. In the words of Rothbard, “Libertarians have misled themselves by making their main dichotomy “government” vs. “private” with the former bad and the latter good. Government, [Alan Milchman] pointed out, is after all not a mystical entity but a group of individuals, “private” individuals if you will, acting in the manner of an organized criminal gang. But this means that there may also be “private” criminals as well as people directly affiliated with the government. What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not “private” property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property. It is justice vs. injustice, innocence vs. criminality that must be our major libertarian focus.”

On Facebook last week, I (largely) inadvertently changed both my cover photo and profile picture to the black-and-yellow Anarcho-Capitalist theme for the first time. This week, of course, small businesses and police cars were torched by Anarcho-Communists around the world in celebration of “May Day”, a Marxist holy day. I figure that now would be the most pertinent time to discuss AnComs in action and AnCaps’ inaction. It’s long-overdue and today is likely the last day I can pretend to be an objective outsider.

Now, I’m going to offend absolutely everyone today, so don’t stop reading when I hurt your feelings… your nemeses will get theirs, too. If I’m going to offend, I may as well start big. I admire two aspects of the AnComs I know and have heard of: they are mutually supportive of everyone even loosely affiliated with anarchism and they are willing to fuck shit up and make a scene.

When one is willing to chain oneself to a tree in Russia as an attempt to prevent the creation of a pit-mining operation, especially if it is likely to end in imprisonment or death, I can infer one or two possibilities. Either, one has nothing to lose, or one is willing to sacrifice everything in order to cause even a modicum of discomfort to one’s enemies. In addition to the dozens or hundreds of AnCom hippies disrupting business as usual, there are thousands publicizing and supporting those radicals.

Many times, even though different factions have incompatible goals, they still promote solidarity between each other. For example, the eco-feminists may protest the petroleum industry and advocate “green” energy in order to smash the patriarchy while also sending money, literature, and publicity to the anti-capitalists destroying the mining equipment used to acquire the lithium for said “green” energies. Obviously, this policy is unsustainable, the moment one group makes actual advances, it will be at the expense of a competing group’s success.

This is where the AnCom appeal to “change everything” comes into play. If Proudhon’s shade were to appear and imbue CrimethInc with phenomenal cosmic powers, they would change everything simultaneously. The eco-feminists and the anti-capitalists would both get what they want; the entire planet would murder all straight men and cease using fossil fuels and the anti-capitalists could establish communist ownership of the lithium mines in order to find far less efficient but more eco-friendly ways of extracting it by hand. Ignoring the inherent coercion and violence in such a solution, it looks vaguely similar to my conception of LibPar.

Unfortunately, the AnComs would not stop at this already impossible set of changes. Communists by default find reality, itself, oppressive. It’s no wonder, though: the very ontology of the universe conspires against many, if not all, of the factions within the big umbrella of Anarcho-Communism. As such, the very operating system of the universe would have to be altered to the point of unrecognizability and absurdity. This state of affairs was once hidden from me in my Marxist days, but came into focus the more philosophically literate I became. This lack of philosophical grounding, though, doesn’t slow down the AnComs one bit.

Conventions and desert gatherings abound. Kurdish feminist AnComs have established themselves as the most effective enemy of ISIS. Unowned and abandoned property around the globe are occupied by AnCom squats. Random communist holy days are punctuated with violent retaliations against state actors. Occupy Whatever finds itself in mainstream media headlines. Anonymous gets pedophiles, terrorists, and legitimate business owners arrested or exiled. Industrial centers burn to the ground. It is no mistake that when average statists hear “anarchist” they think of molotov-wielding college kids; all of this is done at the hands of AnComs, daily, around the globe.

It’s truly unfortunate that these people can be so committed so as to flood prison mailboxes with support of those that get captured by the state and wreak so much damage while also battling the very ontological structure of reality. Imagine if they focused all that undirected fury at their actual oppressors. Instead, the AnComs are relegated to inefficacy and complaining about their successes.

While real AnComs are either in jail or can name several dozen people killed or imprisoned as a result of anti-state activity, I genuinely doubt an AnCap could do more than gesture at Irwin Shiff, Ross Ulbrict, John McAfee, and Derrik J… and only one person on that list really counts. Instead of taking direct action, AnCaps prefer to shout the good news of anarchism on Facebook, iTunes, and YouTube. They write books, give lectures, and look for tax loopholes. They try to teach complicated and abstract concepts to the intellectually crippled masses but, most of all, they argue amongst themselves.

Is the Earth round or flat? Is voting necessary or morally wicked? Is this hypothetical society preferable to that hypothetical society? Is 9mm or .45 cal better personal defense ammo? Is it more effective towards the goal of anarchy to shoot copsor to fuck your wife?

This discussion goes much deeper, though. Without such discussions, we wouldn’t have economics, praxeology, or any accurate sense of ontology. These bases of logic, facts, and evidence provide AnCaps with a cornucopia of toolsets with which to combat the flawed ideologies of both the enemies of freedom as well its misguided defenders. It is this philosophical acuity and epistemic rectitude which has drawn me inexorably nearer and nearer to the ideology of Anarcho-Capitalism, despite my aesthetic distaste for a greater portion of its adherents and agendas.

Why do I find Anarcho-Capitalism aesthetically distasteful (ignoring the clearly superior color choice of the AnComs)? Any reader of this blog will know that I love Woods, Hoppe, Mises, and Rothbard. Those familiar with the literature and politics popular in anarchist circles will note that I’ve drifted closer and closer to Spooner, Molyneux, Cantwell, and Block as time has gone on, even if I still have key disagreements with them. So, it’s clearly not the philosophy or ideology I dislike. It is the lack of action, direct or otherwise. All of us want to be Rothbard, but none of us wants to be Gavrilo Princip, me included. Rather than absolutely every Ancap producing a blog, podcast, merchandise, and peaceful kids and then calling it a day, why not actually engage in capitalism?

The answer is, I ironically, praxeological in nature. I suppose AnCaps, being productive and cooperative members of society, actually have wealth and offspring at risk, whereas voluntarily sterilized squatters and moochers have nothing to lose. I suppose the cost of actually forming a militia or geographically localizing presents inferior or temporally distant gains as opposed to simply working a job, paying one’s oppressors what is demanded, and bickering over whether HOAs or insurance companies ought to replace the state.

“Look who’s talking.”

Me, dying my hair red and black for May Day while posing in front of an AnCap background.

Yeah, yeah, I’m fully aware of the apparent hypocrisy I’m engaged in. So, what am I going to do? What direct action will I engage in and advocate? Other than the usual boring agorist fare I’m already doing: growing my own food, working odd jobs under the table, using bitcoin, etc…. I have a couple ideas. Firstly, I’m self-investing so as to store enough wealth to, someday, abscond to a developing nation and cease paying Empire. Of course, that’s pretty far off… So, in the here and now, I am engaged in producing certain products directed outside of typical AnCap culture as well as marketing certain projects to AnCaps themselves. I prefer to try and be the first on the market, so I will announce said products as they are realized. The proceeds of said projects will, undoubtedly, be invested in successful AnCap activities as well as my own children. (I’m also engaged in direct action… but don’t want to call down legal recourse upon myself.)

There is an idea I am ill-equipped and not geographically positioned to accomplish but really want to spread to those better situated to enact. Those knowing the lore behind my logo may expect me to call for some sort of ecumenical meeting of all anarchists wherein we discover and build commonalities between the AnComs and AnCaps, and I may have done so in the past… but what I want is for AnCap militias and security firms to set up in Seattle, St. Louis, Baltimore, etc. and beat the AnComs at their own game. Protect private property; keep the “protesters” confined to public property and ensure that their fires and violence are directed solely at the state and its enforcers, fly the yellow-and-black flags over the safe properties and stoically bear witness to the carnage between the AnComs and the regular communists. Begin winning the war of ideas by showing the statist hordes what freedom looks like. If it can get results for the KKK, where they simply show up and save private property “because we’re racist against those looters”, how much more success would the AnCaps have doing the same thing “because private property trumps everything”?

TL;DR: Anarcho-Communists like to start fires, break things, and find ways to influence public discourse. It’s too bad that all that direct action is directed at accomplishing disparate and reality-detached goals. Conversely, Anarcho-Capitalists have a pretty good philosophical grounding, probably the best available in all of human history. It’s too bad that all that knowledge results in little more than theory and tax-producing jobs. Typically, this is where I would have said AnCaps should educate AnComs on economics and AnComs should educate AnCaps on how to take direct action. Instead, I want AnCaps to simply demonstrate the utility inherent to Hoppe’s virtues: defend private property at AnCom or BLM riots, buy out undervalued chunks of land and actually start a Galt’s Gulch, and (sure) sell some books or lapel pins along the way.

There’s a cute little meme going around that effectively demonstrates the fundamental flaw with socialism. It’s a picture of half of a Bernie Sanders sign with a note taped where the missing half should be. It basically says “You had one sign, I had none, so I took half of yours, yay socialism!”
This is a perfect depiction of socialism as an ideology: securing the wealth of those with access to it and deploying it to those without. Depending on the specific socialist you ask, you’ll get a different answer concerning what method, exactly, should be used to redistribute the wealth, but that’s a superficial difference.

Communists, at least, propose seizing the means of production, so one would still have to work to produce wealth, rather than simply leeching it off of those who have already produced it. Communism at least pretends to present a sustainable economic model.

Of course some benighted cuckhold liberal “fixed” this meme:

What jumps out to you from that adorable little paragraph? The fact that what he just announced is actually called “charity”and is absolutely not socialism? Good job! You’re not retarded!

This is even worse that what the feminists do, hiding behind the dictionary definition of the term “Feminism is about equality, see? The dictionary says so… Kill all men!” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines Socialism as “A philosophy which promotes the central control of the means of production and distribution and the rejection of capitalism(RE “property rights”).” What this guy did was throw out the definition of socialism entirely and replaced it with a definition wholly divorced from the original. It’s like a feminist saying, “Do you like kittens? Then you’re a feminist.” The individual giving away his surplus signs is likely to occur for only two reasons: to promote Bernie Sanders, or because he’s a nice guy and would rather give away his stuff than sell it. The only way to make this hypothetical more closely resemble socialism would be to have Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz get elected and send a militarized police force (in the name of the IRS) to go and forcibly take the signs and distribute them as Bernie sees fit.

Many who support Sanders (or any politician, for that matter) would actually agree that such a course of action is acceptable, because of some ingrained hatred for successful people. Usually, the rhetoric centers on “how many signs does this guy really need?” Which is an asinine question. The guy has as many signs as he has bothered to invest in. If he had wanted more, he would have made or purchased more and if he wanted fewer, he would have made or purchased fewer. If he were to have acquired a certain number and then decided he wanted fewer, he could sell, give away, or destroy the requisite number of signs so as to accomplish such a goal. I can’t understand how this is a difficult concept for anyone older than 13.

This question really is an intentional framing error: it’s not “How much do you need?” it’s “How much of it can can I steal?” Unless you can demonstrate an axiomatic and universal principle which states that “Someone should only have as much as they need,” the burden of proof will weigh heavy on your shoulders. Even if you could, the next step of that process would be to demonstrate why, exactly, you need that smartphone, spandex undergarments, indoor plumbing, the ability to vote, the granola and nuts you had for breakfast, or even the air in your lungs… There is no tangible difference between “a guy with a trillion signs” and “some schmuck who doesn’t understand the political ideology he is attempting to ram down the throats of hundreds of millions of people”, which means that the same moral rules apply to both of you.

So, before you start preaching outright lies about your lord and savior, the state, and trying to violently inflict your lies on others, maybe (just maybe) you should get your head out of your ass and leave the thinking to the adults in the room.

The term “fair” comes up a lot these days. I have only a limited chronological sample (26 years), and I have not always been as aware of its use as I could have been, but it would seem that my generation (unlike preceding generations) never learned to stop using that word. When I was five, things being fair was a big deal. Of course, “fair” meant something different to each person, even grown-ups. The more conservative (RE: less-socialist) parents would try to make each instance one of desert: “who earned what?” while the egalitarian lefty parents would try to implement some form of social justice: “Your brother is younger and smaller than you, so he always gets to go first and gets more candy.”

Of course, when one grows up, a part of that process is the realization that “life isn’t fair”. This is because “fair” doesn’t exist, and it’s a self-contradictory concept, no matter how one defines it, much like common conceptions of justice.

Yes, the title sounds really bullshitty, but it certainly is an eye-catcher, isn’t it? If you listened to last week’s belated post, you may recall me talking about my journey to anarchism. When I was rounding the bend on my final approach to liberty, I was repulsed by certain environments I encountered and was kinda’ forced to enter the philosophy of anarchism through the back door. The rabid paulbots were throwing temper tantrums over the media ignoring the existence of their messiah. The Libertarians were too busy voting, raising money, pretending to be freedom-minded while also pretending to be politicians and endorsing ridiculous concepts like abortion and gay marriage. The objectivists were being generally surly, demeaning, and staunchly atheist. The AnComs were too busy burning down private property to be bothered by the fact that the government was out to get us all. Most distressing, though, were the AnCaps.

“Wait, ain’t you an AnCap?” Not quite. If you recall my post about the MadPhilosopher logo, I consider myself to be just a straight-up anarchist. Since before I had started this blog, I have been economically literate enough to know that capitalism is, for all intents and purposes, a necessary and inevitable feature of pre-and-post-state societies, but that doesn’t necessarily make me an AnCap. Part of the reason I don’t consider myself to be so is because of the experiences I had with them on my way to liberty.

My first exposure to anarcho-capitalism was under the more innocuous name of “Austrian Economics” when I was reading Rothbard and Spooner. I read these guys towards the end of my communist days, when I was trying to figure out why previous attempts at the communist experiment didn’t work out. I was hoping to find a handful of controls that those dirty capitalists had come up with to ensure that products were manufactured within expected tolerances. For example, if I go to Home Depot, a great number of things are standardized. You’ve got X, Y, and Z diameters of pipes and fittings, and there seems to be the perfect supply available to meet demand; rarely would something run out, but there were only ever a couple dozen items on the shelves… and in communist experiments, people would cut corners to meet the letter of the regulations while putting in the minimum quantity of resources. “Make a million nails,” results in thumbtack-sized nails. “Make this weight in nails,” results in railroad spikes. And when it gets to the point of “Make a million nails that are exactly this size, shape, and out of this material… and if you don’t, it’s off to the gulag with you,” results in everyone saying “fuck it, I quit” and the USSR collapses overnight.

Clearly, I didn’t get the answer I wanted. “Stop making regulations, and let people do what they will… don’t worry, it’ll all work out just fine,” isn’t exactly what a communist wants to hear. I learned a lot, though; it definitely had a pronounced effect on my migration from communism to the Tea Party and then to liberty. I returned to doing research in the Austrian School when I was getting into objectivism, later on, and that’s when I discovered the AnCaps. There was a specific distinction in the rhetoric of the Austrians like Rothbard as compared to the AnCaps I met: awareness of the is/ought divide.

The AnCaps I met, either through their ignorance or a misunderstanding on my part, seemed to equivocate that which is economically advisable as identical to that which is ethically desirable. This was disappointing to me; AnCaps were clearly the inheritors of the Austrian School, but they lacked the moral awareness of their predecessors. My motivation for communism and the subsequent ideological migration was primarily a moral one, as fits in the rhetoric of Aristotle, Aquinas, Marx, and Trotsky, and to hear “That which is profitable is that which is moral,” rubbed me every wrong way. I am totally open to this interpretation being mostly due to misunderstandings on my part, though.

The communist projects, ostensibly, are an attempt at adapting economics to ethics. Ironically, the Tea Party, in their own fucked-up way, are engaged in a similar project: attempting to adapt politics (the widespread application of violence) to ethics. Even Rand and the objectivists are engaged in that project: adapting public consciousness to ethics. So, to see AnCaps seeming to do the reverse, adapting ethics to economics, was so contrary to my methods of reason that I didn’t know how to process it. Now that I’ve mentally acquired my liberty legs, I see anarchism as an attempt to adapt oneself to objective moral facts… something that Christians ought to be more sympathetic to.

In hindsight, I think that I misunderstood mostly due to the paradigm I was operating in, adapting various things to ethics. I think that one thing that didn’t help, though, was the lack of philosophical knowledge on the part of the AnCaps in question. I think I’m gonna try to fix that here. That which is profitable is not necessarily moral. It could be profitable to rob a liquor store, but it’s a violation of one’s right to be free from theft and is therefore immoral. On a long enough timeline, I argue, that which is moral is most profitable. For example, not robbing a liquor store will most likely play out better for one in the long run. Even virtuous things, such as sustainable living or industry, when done responsibly and rationally, are likely to play out well in the long run; investments in oceanic desalinization would have suddenly become incredibly profitable in California in recent years and the same can be said for growing homegrown organic hipster-feed.

What do I mean by this is/ought, ethical/economic divide? As I said, when talking about Paradigmatic Awareness and Moral Ambiguity, one’s actions ought to be informed and rational. Statements of “should” or “ought”, when concerning a person’s actions, are without exception either ethical or moral statements. (Taxonomic note: I consider moral statements to be statements as relate to objective moral facts and ethical statements to be “if->then” statements predicated on value judgments, but that’s a different blog post that hasn’t been written yet.) Moral statements are relatively easy: something is either moral or immoral, depending on it’s status as relates to deontological principles… you know, murder coercion and theft are immoral. Ethical statements are a little more involved, and tend to be at the heart of a lot of angry internet arguments: “If you care about poor people, you’ve gotta vote for this rich guy,” or whatever.

In order to make an accurate ethical statement, one must understand the intricacies of the “if” and have a solid grasp of the way the world works in order to produce the appropriate “then”. This is where economics comes into play. It goes well beyond “if you want to pay rent, you probably shouldn’t buy this meth,” and even beyond, “if you care about poor people, you should probably lift employment regulations so that they can get a job.” For example, an understanding of basic principles of economics can inform decisions that have nothing to do with money itself. This is because economics is about management of scarce resources, not just money. For example, if I have a limited amount of time and I’m trying to maximize my gains in family relationships, self-education, and general pleasure, then I should probably try to generate an overlap in applications: do something educational with the family that isn’t boring as hell. Knowing when to cut one’s losses is another useful piece of information: cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, utility assessments, etc. are, too.

In other words, it’s not a statement of morality to say eliminating perverse incentives can incentivize productive behavior; however, it is an ethical statement to say “if you want to encourage productive behaviors in moocher and looter classes, then you should try to eliminate perverse incentives.” I’m not talking matters of political policy, mind you. After all, managing the widespread application of violence is immoral and if one wants to make the world a better place, then they should opt-out of political engagement.

Remember: anarchy is a philosophy of personal responsibility. How can one hold themselves to a moral or ethical standard if they don’t know how to accomplish their goals or even set those goals? If one wishes to travel to a third world country and improve the quality of life of the people there (preaching religious views included, but optional), they ought to understand what behaviors are being incentivized by showing up and just giving things away or doing the work oneself. Without educating and assisting in the development of infrastructure, gifts and labor are more harmful than helpful. Before trying to do good, one must know how.

TL;DR: Economics and ethics are two different fields of study. However, ethics devoid a solid understanding of how the world works is useless at best and misanthropic at worst. As much as statists will try to deny it, economics is an excellent instrument for understanding human action. Basic scientific literacy, including physics, chemistry, economics, etc. is necessary for the development of a solid ethical grounding. This distinction and requirement is important to acknowledge explicitly when discussing economics and/or ethics with non-anarchists, lest outsiders misunderstand.

Has Mother Church wielded the sword and shackles of the state for so long She has forgotten the use of the shepherd’s crook?

A Response to Laudato Si

As is usually the case, the Pope did something and the liberal media came in their pants with excitement. My less-involved Catholic friends and some non-catholic friends then asked me what he actually said and did and what it means, media spin aside. I make it a point to read Encyclicals as they come out, as often as possible. While I’m skeptical of Catholic social teaching for a number of reasons, it would be unbecoming of a Catholic intellectual critical of some social teachings to not keep abreast of progress made in that regard. Also, with the persistent questions from others, I find that it is beneficial to myself, my friends, and our relationships to be able to provide a service in the form of translating 170-odd pages of teaching that’s very involved and built on millennia of scholarship into something digestible to a more secular mind.

In interest of defending Church teaching against the portrayal it will receive in the mainstream (RE: pagan) culture, I spent a good chunk of yesterday and this morning reading and re-reading Laudato Si and reading many short commentaries written by various clergymen and lay Catholic journalists. I have several pages of handwritten notes, addressing specific things that were said, the general theme of the encyclical, and its relationship to history and standing Church teachings, and I’m not sure how much use those notes are going to find in this post, as there’s some very important general themes that need to be addressed. These issues far overshadow individual lines or phrases that may be misinterpreted or otherwise used contrary to the goals set out for the encyclical, so these smaller issues may be overlooked in this post.

The most important point to get out of the way is the relationship between Catholic social teaching and the general body of scholarship within the Church. Many Catholics, even devout Catholics do not understand the role that the encyclicals and other works in Catholic social teaching play in the Faith. Catholic social teaching is not Doctrine or Dogma, it is not an infallible pronouncement by the Pope acting alone and in persona Christi. Catholic social teaching is, essentially, the magisterium of the Church saying, “Based on what we have to work with, here, this looks like the best solution to a particular problem the Church faces.” In the case of this encyclical, it identifies several problems, some real and some imagined, and looks for a root cause for these problems in order to make “a variety of proposals possible, all capable of entering into dialogue with a view to developing comprehensive solutions.” In such a dialogue, “…the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views.” This post (that will be wholly invisible to the magisterium and to those who could and would affect change) is an attempt to address the issues presented, their root causes, and continue the dialogue sought by Pope Francis. No, I don’t claim to be an “expert” as indicated in the encyclical, but I am confident that I am no more or less an expert than a substantial majority of the people involved in and affected by this dialogue. As such, I am as entitled as anyone else to express my informed assessment of the situation.

This document is essentially three different encyclicals blended together in a frenetic and haphazard arrangement, a departure from the more analytic and procedural voice and style of Francis’ immediate predecessors. It may sound strange, but I will do my best to explain what I mean.

One of the encyclicals is an assessment of mankind’s relationship to it’s environment, the role that we play in our environment’s well-being and the role that our environment plays in our well-being, both spiritually and physically. It explores how exploitative and irreverent practices with regards to creation develop vicious attitudes within the practitioners which results in the exploitation and irreverence being directed at other human beings as well. In a surprising but well-defended argument, the Pope lays out how industrial monoculture farming is culturally related to inhumane medical experimentation and abortion, for example. This encyclical reads as a slightly less poetic text that one would expect Francis’ namesake to have written, waxing on and on about the glory of the Creator as seen in His creation, our role as stewards of that creation, and the teleology of all things. This encyclical appears to be addressed to the traditional audience of the encyclicals: the people of the Church in the world at large and within the magisterium. It calls for a pastoral approach centered on acknowledging the almost panentheist nature of reality, how God Himself is part of his creation and His presence in His creatures must be respected, lest one fall into the habit of not acknowledging that same presence on one’s fellow humans. With typical Franciscan flair, the primary focus is on how the poor are marginalized and harmed the most by these irresponsible and irreverent practices.

Another one of the encyclicals is drawing a connection between this renewed environmental focus and the greater body of Catholic teachings, the relationship between abortion, postmodernism, consumerism, the destruction of the family, the evils of war and violence, etc. These passages are, unsurprisingly, the main focus of the articles popping up all over the internet titled some variation of “Ten things that the mainstream media will ignore in Laudato Si”. This encyclical is, essentially, a reaffirmation in the long-standing tenets of the Church: Abortion is murder, contraception is bad, gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility, postmodernism is an intellectual cancer that is killing humanity and faith, etc. The only new addition to this litany that is presented is to try and add “and mind your greenhouse gasses” somewhere in-between “Postmodernism is bad,” and “We have to be careful with GMOs.”

The main focus for everyone, myself included, is this third encyclical. This one is addressed to “world leaders” and the UN in particular, as opposed to the Church and its people. This encyclical is rife with praise for worldwide economic manipulations, the use of government violence to accomplish the ends of the Church, an appeal for granting all governments more authority and force to implement stricter environmental regulations, broader economic manipulations, and redistribution of wealth. This encyclical explicitly calls for a progressive carbon tax, a world government with a navy and police force with authority to supersede national governments, national and local governments to implement “free” public housing and utility access, and heightened enforcement of drug laws.

Worse, though, than pleading with the state to use it’s swords and shackles to coerce responsible behavior out of humanity at large, Francis takes a page out of Pope Urban VIII’s book. Overstepping his authority in moral and theological matters, the Pope attempts to side with the “scientific consensus” and endorse a worldview that is anti-scientific and empirically falsified. Declaring human-caused global warming to be an existential threat to creation of a magnitude equivalent to the great flood which God repented of in Genesis, Francis demonstrates that he needs to hire better researchers and ought to be more reticent before declaring Galileo anathema. He makes this mistake twice, in rapid succession. After demonstrating an unwillingness to critically assess the legacy academic stance in light of empirical evidence in science, he does so again in the realm of economics. Using Keynesian economic prescriptions and “green” socialist rhetoric, he creates a straw-man of the free market which is even more flimsy and caricatured than those manufactured by liberal college students on social media.

There was one line, in particular that required a double-take, a re-reading, and it ultimately elicited a violent reaction from me:

“Civil authorities have the right and duty to adopt clear and firm measures in support of small producers and differentiated production. To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit, restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power. To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practise[sic] a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute.” p96

This quote is taken from the midst of pages upon pages of diatribe against international outsourcing of labor, speculative investment, development of trade infrastructures, the automation of menial tasks. While lamenting these actions, the Pope calls for an increase in the policies which are the direct cause of them. Economic regulations, such as the minimum wage, intellectual property legislation, and progressive corporate taxation and subsidies creates innumerable perverse incentives within the market, as a natural matter of course which is empirically verifiable. To blame “the market” and paint such claims as “a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals,” demonstrates a wholesale ignorance of the science that is economics. One should expect a former scientist to understand the limitations of his understanding of others’ fields and at least call upon them to inform his opinion. If he has done so, he needs to look harder for a reliable resource.

The reason this sudden interest in mainstream sciences and display of ignorance in these matters is offensive is because the Pope is a moral authority in the world, and to draw upon obviously false data, bundle it up in moral language and issue ethical and political proclamations demeans both the sciences he misrepresents and the position which he occupies in the See of Peter.

These three encyclicals are blended together in a manner that makes them inextricable from each other. In one sentence, Francis will point out a theological understanding concerning substantive relationship of the trinity, move to an analogy concerning the nature of agriculture, and indict private ownership of resources. Because of this, it is impossible to tell where the Pope is addressing individual Catholics and exhorting them to consider their role in creation from a theological perspective and where he is exhorting politicians to use violence in order to protect the poor in the developing world from global warming from an economical perspective.

There is no denying that people everywhere in the world are facing ecological crises: living in cities that are not conducive to human flourishing, living near industrial mining operations, facing evictions from tribal lands or private property in the interest of economic gains for the powerful, the destruction of biodiversity in inhabited areas, and a general disregard for the inalienable rights of human beings are all issues that need to be addressed, and quickly. However, to blame “the free market” when there is no such thing, to pin the blame on people that are merely doing their best to survive when faced with systematic violations of their rights, and to fall back on methods that are the direct cause for the decline of Christianity and the rise of the postmodern world seriously misdiagnoses the cause of the problem and results in a very dangerous situation, both in the world at large and in the Church itself.

This political edict in the guise of moral teaching places those that are well-versed in science and economics in the difficult position of trying to justify the teachings of the Church that are explicitly contrary to what they know to be true. Some may lose their faith, either in the Church or in reason. The loss of faith in either is a tragedy, and it can be prevented simply by Francis double-checking his work and being cautious not to overstep the bounds of papal authority. An even greater tragedy than some umber of individuals losing their faith due to a contradiction in moral teaching and empirical fact is the alienation that such teachings has formed between the Church and the people and institutions best situated to aid the Church in pursuing a more Christian world. Economists the world over are denouncing the Church and discovering the long-standing trend on Catholic social teaching towards full-blown socialism. The scientific communities that tend to lean more socially and fiscally conservative (like the Church) also happen to be the ones that have disproven any substantial causal relationship between human activity and global climate change, in outright ignoring their findings, the Pope has alienated the scientific community once again, driving the long standing wedge between reason and faith even further. Even in moral and philosophical circles, there is outrage that the pope would undermine basic human rights (such as the right to be secure in one’s property) for the sake of the rights of woodland critters and soil bacteria, which is explicitly done in this document.

TL;DR: Despite all of my defenses of Pope Francis to-date, my re-interpretations of his words in the light of reason and Church teaching in order to explain to others how one can rationally support his teachings, there is no way to deny that he is a full-on socialist with a callous disregard for economics and science. While I am not a sedevacantist or about to apostatize, this is an excellent opportunity to begin picking apart the whole of Catholic social teaching and calling for reform in the Church, not concerning matters which are doctrinally secure (such as prohibitions on gay marriage or abortion) but concerning instances where the Church draws too heavily on philosophically and scientifically flawed information. Many lament that this encyclical will be remembered as “the global warming encyclical”. I lament it as well, the global warming was merely a pretext for pushing a theologically-backed call for one world socialist government, and to remember it as the “global warming encyclical” discounts the very real damage that has already been done by the document to the integrity of the Church and the incalculable damage that will be done if world leaders heed the Pope’s plea.

Discovering that the See of Peter is occupied by a died-in-the-wool socialist is a good opportunity to review Church history. I’ve found, in my limited education of the subject, that the delineation between a Doctor of the Church and a heretic is a razor-thin one between those who are willing to admit the possibility of error and those too prideful to do so.